Pulpachair
1yr ago
So, your position is that Biden asked for the firing in December and three to four months later, Shokin was fired due to a change in public opinion, almost as if a whisper campaign had changed something behind the scenes. Some good luck that Biden was out ahead of the pack in thinking Shokin should go.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?
Trump is remarkably good at motivating Republican voters. I would argue that the only thing he is better at is motivating Democrat voters, thus no longer being president.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Does it even matter? Every bit of information I've looked at in terms of spending vs. academic achievement shows basically no correlation, and sometimes a very weak inverse correlation. Utah, Colorado, and Iowa spend close to the lowest amount per student on education, but consistently rank in the top 10 for academic achievement. Arizona spends slightly more than Utah, and New York spends the most of any state, but both of them are ranked below the median (New York well below), while New Jersey has very high spend and ranks in the top 10 for achievement. Arguments about disparate spend amounts based on property taxes beg the question.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
It is always funny to me that courts continue to take the State Farm v. Campbell rule on due process for punitive damages as merely a suggestion. We will see if either award survives appeal.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
shank's pony
This is not a substantitve response, but it has been decades since I've heard that phrase. You brought a smile to my day, sir.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
I may be your worst enemy. I only tell intentionally bad jokes at work, really awful forced puns and jokes where the setup is overly long for a weak punch line. A portion of it is sadism for sure, but the other portion is giving my team a momentary distraction and a common enemy to fight against. It’s actually pretty good for unit cohesion. On the flip side, if someone laughs at my joke, I know that they’re either an idiot or a kiss-ass and not to be trusted with important tasks.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
It is certainly the excuse that many of these men use; how seriously to take that excuse is a different matter, and clearly it’s transparently false in many if not most cases. I do think there is probably something important and true, though, about the profound culture shock and almost “kid in a candy store” mental space that a lot of them must be experiencing in their new environment, though.
I think it is telling that we don’t hear stories about roving gangs of young Amish men on Rumspringa assaulting women. It is far more reflective of Muslim attitudes toward women generally and kafir women in particular that this cope is taken seriously at all.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Werewolf suggests involuntary transformation into a defined form. Navajo yee naldlooshii are evil witches who can assume multiple different forms and possess animals and other people. Update your monster manuals appropriately.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
The key phrase in your link is "For now, that translates into an almost $4 billion gain," with emphasis on "for now". The SPR is currently depleted to levels not seen since 1983, around 350M barrels. This is from a peak of about 750M barrels. There are at least another 160M barrels earmarked for sale by congress over the next 5 years. DoE regulations permit (but don't require) replenishment of the reserves when WTI crude is at or below $72/barrel. It has been at that price point multiple times over the last two years, including last month, but no effort has been made to replenish the reserves, at all. Secretary Granholm has said that DoE might start replenishment in Q4, assuming oil prices are consistently below the repurchase price point. That level of commitment does not inspire me with confidence.
At some point, that bill is going to come due, either in the form of expensive oil going into the SPR instead of cheap oil coming out of it, or really wishing we had some expensive oil to get past a supply disruption. It's all short-sighted to the point of absurdity.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Obama cancelled offshore drilling and pushed green tech too and yet oil production doubled under him.
Mostly in spite of his policies. 2010-2014 was the technologically-driven shale boom period, followed by the crash in 2014-15. The leases that facilitated this expansion were created under Bush who was a wee bit more energy industry friendly than Obama/Biden.
US oil production continued to expand under Trump, though more slowly than it did during the Shale boom and peaked in late 2019-2020 before COVID nearly bankrupted 1/3 of the US regional producers by briefly making oil prices go negative. It has taken three years for US production to get back to 95% of the peak production because it isn't just like turning on a spigot again.
Prices are slowly normalizing, but are still historically high, even adjusting for inflation. This makes very little sense to me because U.S. demand has fallen almost 10% from 2019 and almost 20% from 2005 despite returning to high production rates. I'll have to look into what is going on with global production in that time period, but that data is harder to track down and less reliable.
I have no idea. As I argued in previous posts I think regulatory decisions are probably less impactful than the broader global markets, and investments in new productive capacity remains low for that exact reason. So a lot of the future probably hinges on stuff like the Ukraine War and the decisions made by OPEC. Still, coupled with the fact that Biden tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to depress prices, I think this largely confirms that Biden was certainly not driven by a desire to crush oil production and keep prices high for Americans. Like most Presidents, he wants voters to be happy with him.
This analysis seems apt to me, with the exception of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve publicity stunts. Tapping the reserves to increase supply temporarily to help lower prices was nothing more than a headline generator, and was a poor decision strategically. It's selling cheap gas now to buy expensive gas in the future.
I do appreciate that the messaging from the Biden administration has moved away from "Evil Oil Companies™" to focusing pretty much exclusively on culture warring in the runup to the election. I don't think campaigning against big oil is a winning strategy when prices are still 50% higher than they were under the last Republican administration.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
I doubt it's any of these. I think it's edgelording. I think it's Iron Maiden feeding on Christian Satanic Rock panic by releasing Number of the Beast. I think it's Joe Biden doing Dark Brandon memes in real life. I think it's 4-chan making the left turn the OK sign into a white power symbol. It's meant to tweak the ideological opponents by saying the thing that will trigger them the most. In which case, well done fellas. Too bad the message was muddled by, you know, having people twerking in front of kids. Message discipline across broad coalitions is a lofty goal.
In general, my opinion on the groomer stuff is that I really, really doubt that the vast, teeming majority of the LGBT community is trying to convert the straights or their kids. Most gays alive today still remember how shitty it was to be a young, closeted gay before the mid-2000s and would prefer to spare kids nowadays the shittiness, so being more open and accepting about it is a good thing, but they don't mind the straights having their preference.
There are, however, a not insignificant number of predatory activist allies who want to collect exotic people like rare Pokemon. The more exotic the better (a shiny Trans kid is the winning card these days.) These people are overrepresented in media, influencer-types and, apparently, the education system. A lot of them don't mind if they make a kid's life measurably shittier as long as they are bolstering their collection. They're the left's version of conversion therapists.
There are also the actual pedos who wear activism like a convenient skinsuit, but I suspect those are mixed in with any group that provides easy access to kids proportionally based on how easy that access is.
The trick for LGBT is how to shed the predatory activists and police against the actual predators. The predatory activists tend to run a lot of the LGBT organizations, so it's a fair amount of cutting off of one's nose to get rid of the predatory activists. And getting rid of the actual predators entirely is a quixotic feat for a group as disorganized as "all of the gays."
One thing that would be really, really, really easy to do, though, is to stop supporting sexy drag shows for kids and stop advertising Folsom Street Fair stuff as being family friendly. If they were to take that really simple, easy step, it would go a long way toward convincing normies that the behavior is not, in fact, "groomy."
Pulpachair
1yr ago
The main thing to note is that Hunter's main advantage was having the money to pay the tax debt. That is where his status and connections distinguish him. I don't know where he got that cash.
Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris loaned him the money to make the tax payment and has apparently been bankrolling his housing and travel for a few years now.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
If someone had asked you five years ago whether Hunter seemed fine, you probably would have answered yes as well. He was of counsel at Boies Schiller, was co-owner of an investment company, had bounced around at various government and private lobbying posts throughout his adult life, and carried on publicly like a respectable member of a political family. But for the laptop incident, that would still be the public view of him.
Being well-connected and having sympathetic political press at your disposal is hugely beneficial for families like the Bidens. The respectability is more of an effect of people not looking too closely than actually being respectable. I would venture a guess that a deeper look at the rest of the Bidens would probably reveal more of Hunter-type behavior than you might expect.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Except that the government wants workers, not stay-at-home mothers. So the women will have to have babies as well as going out to be the high-tech labour force, and that is the problem in a nutshell. Do you want bodies on the production lines, or do you want wives and mothers?
Women can replace men in factories, but men can't replace women as childbearers and primary nurturers. You want high IQ, high conscientiousness women bearing most of the children, and raising them to be high-conscientiousness citizens. I don't think it's possible (or desireable, frankly) to put the genie back in the bottle in terms of women in the workplace, but I think you can create a middle ground that encourages motherhood and family while also allowing women to succeed professionally.
Public Policies to adopt:
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Abortion is illegal outside of rape, incest, congenital disease, or life of mother exceptions, and requires prompt reporting of rape and DNA testing of incest reasons.
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A conviction for incest means lifetime incarceration.
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Primary and Secondary schools are year-round and align with typical work-weeks. Teacher compensation increased to reflect higher workload.
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School curricula focused on STEM education, basic literacy, civics, physical education and vocational classes.
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College-level online courses free to all citizens on STEM and vocational classes - no other higher education is subsidized.
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Government pays for all pre-natal and pediatric medical care.
Grant tax incentives to:
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Companies with very generous mat leave up to two years.
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Companies who offer work schedules for mothers and single caregiving fathers to align with school hours and holidays.
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Families with two parents with children. The benefits don't expire when the children reach age of majority.
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Married couples who adopt.
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Single mothers who give up their infants for adoption, doubled if it is their own parents or relatives adopting the child.
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Community beautification services or other civic engagement.
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Military service - lifetime supplemental stipend assuming an honorable discharge.
Add tax penalties for:
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Parents whose children are convicted of felonies and incarcerated, by canceling the tax incentives above.
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Families with school-aged children where both parents work full-time.
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Divorce. In the case of provable unilateral adultery, the adulterer suffers the tax consequences for both partners.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Mr. Penny’s use of force may have been justified, but it’s not going to hinge on a rap sheet which he couldn’t have seen.
Minor nitpick and only tangential to your comment. Yes, the rap sheet can’t possibly have informed the judgment of those that were on the train. For the rest of the world that wasn’t on the train, it should adjust our priors regarding the likelihood that Neely was acting erratically and threateningly enough to warrant being subdued by three grown men.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
“It is inescapable not to observe the racial dynamics here,” said Crump. “If the roles were reversed,” he continued, “how much outraged would there be in America?”
Wait, Ben Crump again?
Family attorney Ben Crump said in a statement, “While this is certainly a step in the right direction, we will continue to fight for Ralph while he works towards a full recovery.”
I am constantly amazed that Ben Crump is instantly the attorney of record in every single one of these cases. Somewhere out there, there has to be a bar association curious about how an out of state attorney becomes the family attorney of so many high profile cases without violating that jurisdiction's version of ABA 7.3.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
A bit further back than 1997, but still after the purported demise of the machine politics era, the grand jury report for the 1982 Chicago election is informative on the different fraud strategies used to generate over 100,000 fraudulent votes in the midterms that year. The specific strategies included
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Absent voter canvassing - paid canvassers who were supposed to correct voter rolls instead used canvassing to identify voters who had died, moved, or had no intention of voting as targets for fraudulent votes.
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Fraudulent use of absentee registration - precinct captains and canvassers would convince residents to sign up for absentee ballots, then fill out the ballots themselves voting party line
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Paying drunks, homeless and aliens to vote
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Manually altering the vote counts
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Harvesting ballots from nursing homes
Of those methods, manually altering the vote counts is more difficult now. The other methods are no more difficult or much, much easier to pull off. In the 41 years since then, we have expanded the mail-in vote to be broad enough to cover everyone. Ballot harvesting is now explicitly legal in quite a few jurisdictions with minimum verifications in place to ensure that the ballots are actually cast by the person on the registration card. In jurisdictions where it is illegal, there is an awful lot of wink and nod non-enforcement.
Much of the opportunity for fraud is now outsourced to GOTV organizations tied to both the local and national parties. They conduct the registration drives, canvassing, and harvesting with a degree of separation from the party proper so that when an employee is caught being "inadequately supervised" it doesn't implicate the party.
While I assume that both parties engage in fraud to the extent they can get away with it, I would expect that Democrats benefit from it more simply due to the parties' positions on whether greater voter fraud protections are needed. I think it's unlikely but not impossible that the 2020 presidential election was within the margin of fraud.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
While I agree it is unlikely, Sy Hersh isn’t exactly a random substack.
That said, this is thinly sourced, would indicate criminal behavior by multiple people in the executive branch, and an act of aggression against a warring nuclear power. I think Biden is an idiot, but I have to think the joint chiefs would have stopped this.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
It would be more accurate to say that in the minds of the authors, the positive traits are held to be positive largely because they correlate more strongly with having white skin. That if non-whites had a greater say in the culture, other attributes (not necessarily the opposite of the “white” traits) would be held as markers of good character.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel,_Inc._v._MCA_Records,_Inc. is always a fun read.
Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668 - Dist. Court, SD Texas 2001 is a treat in the sense that you can still see the ring marks where the judge backhanded the attorneys:
Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact—complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words—to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
I sort of feel like Johnson is not a great screenwriter, just flashy, and pulling wool over people's eyes with simple lazy tricks
I hard disagree. Brick and Looper are two of the better-written movies of the last 20 years. He has a good ear for dialogue and gets good performances from his cast. He was absolutely the wrong man to write and direct a Star Wars movie, but the sequel trilogy was doomed from the beginning due to structural problems with the story JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy decided to tell.
Johnson’s problem is that he views himself as an auteur. He definitely makes his best movies when he is constrained by budget or a script supervisor who can put the kibosh on his desire to make “art” instead of telling a good story. He crawled up his own ass when making Star Wars and the fan reaction basically guaranteed he would stay there out of stubbornness. I wish he would come out again and make some good niche movies that weren’t full of swipes at the kids on Twitter who were mean to him for “ruining Star Wars.”
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Over the holidays, I had a relatively pleasant call with my mother. Relatively in that there were only four oblique references to my infidel status.
My wife doesn’t hear it when it happens. She is missing a few decades of history of argument via insinuation, so she leaves the call thinking it was just the nicest call, while I am ranging between annoyed and fuming.
Almost no Hollywood tv shows or movies are made by or for conservative audiences. The closest conservatives get are things like Top Gun: Maverick or Yellowstone, which aren’t exactly conservative. It’s more that they don’t treat conservatives and/or non-coastal Americans with sneering contempt. For most of the red tribe types that I know, they are primed to see microagressions in Hollywood productions. Perhaps the writers and directors are wholly innocent and just repeat what they see on n their milieu. Maybe my mother doesn’t mean to provoke me when she brings up religion multiple times in a short call. It is a significant part of her life and informs her worldview in almost every aspect. The entirety of my adult life, she has used it as a cudgel, but maybe this time she was wholly innocently bringing it up seemingly out of nowhere.
Pulpachair
1yr ago
Griswold v Connecticut. Estelle Griswold was a planned parenthood executive who collaborated with local law enforcement to get charged on the Comstock law in Connecticut. That was enough to get past the ripeness issue that resulted in dismissing Poe v Ullman and Tileston v Ullman. Justice Harlan had already signaled the outcome of a successful challenge in his dissent on Poe, so it was just a matter of creating the set of facts needed.
This sort of gamesmanship is almost de rigueur in any sort of specific-issue appellate practice. I don’t really take issue with the practice because courts do not rule prospectively (unless they want to.) If a law becomes absurd under a set of facts that can be reasonably passed off as naturally occurring, it deserves to be challenged.
Pulpachair
2yr ago
That would indeed be terrible if, you know, Twitter weren't already knowingly penetrated by Chinese intelligence assets.
You’re not wrong, but wasn’t this also the case for the Trump impeachments and the Jan 6 committee? The first Trump impeachment started in December 2019 when COVID was first acknowledged in China and continued while it spread in Italy. The second impeachment came during some of the most strenuous arguments about continued lockdowns. Objecting to a political hit because of the “state of the world” is special pleading unless all political hits are off-limits forever and ever.
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